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She watched him for longer than she should, trying to find her courage, because instinctively she knew that whatever was said next could be a far more damaging line than the sexual one she had placed between them.
‘I meant my vows.’
She had too. But she had also meant what she’d said about divorce. Because neither of them could continue to live like this. She opened the door to the patio and, on bare feet, made her way over to where Javier sat on the steps that went down to the lower pool level. He didn’t move, not even a millimetre, but she knew he was aware of her there. It was the imperceptible change—as if he became even more still.
She opened her mouth to speak but his words cut her off.
‘Why didn’t you come back?’
CHAPTER NINE
EMILYWASGLADthat he didn’t look at her when he asked. Glad that she couldn’t read the expression behind the toneless question. But still her breath shivered from her lungs as she exhaled the hurt and guilt from the question.
This. This was what she had been hiding from for the last six years. She could tell herself that Javier had left her feeling lonely, had thrown himself into his business, but really...that was only half the story. And the lesser half at that.
She took a seat beside him on the step, not touching, but close enough to feel the warmth from his body. Barely hours before, she had felt stripped to raw honesty and she knew that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, betray him now by lying. They both deserved the truth now.
‘Mum met Steven when I was about eleven,’ she began, knowing it wasn’t where he’d expected her answer to take them. She felt his gaze turn to her, but it was easier to look out into the shadowed gorge beyond. ‘Before that, it had just been the two of us but I’d been happy with that. Mum...didn’t know who my father was—she’d been seventeen when I was conceived. Angry at parents who stifled and disapproved of her, and looking for love in some very wrong places,’ Emily said with a shrug, less embarrassed and more sad for her mother, who had been rejected doubly when she’d told her parents she was pregnant. ‘They kicked her out.’
She heard the disdainful ‘tut’ which—for Javier—was expressive enough and she smiled ruefully.
‘But I never feltthe loss of it. Mum made everything magical. There were always stories of fairies, and parties and magic and colour. So much colour,’ Emily said, remembering a childhood covered in glitter, finger-paints, mud pies and fun. The laughter and love of the years they’d spent—just the two of them—had been so, so precious to her.
‘Not that it wasn’t hard for her,’ Emily said, nodding. ‘She worked as much as she could—taking me with her on cleaning jobs until I was old enough for daycare and school. Money was...’ she searched for a word that a billionaire like him would understand ‘...not there,’ she settled on. ‘But Mum made that work too. Though I saw how stressed she was when she thought I wasn’t looking. The way she would bite her nails down to the quick. The way that she would drink hot water sometimes instead of lunch or have porridge for dinner. Things were hard without support from her parents and a kid at seventeen? It hadn’t exactly broadened her social life. So, when she met Steven...’
The first thing Emily remembered was her mother’s relief. Relief that she could share her burden. And although her mother would be devastated if she knew Emily had felt herself as such, she had. So Emily had promised herself that she’d make an effort with Steven.
‘He made Mum happy. She found security with him.’
A security that had been the last thing on Emily’s mind the morning of her wedding to Javier. That free-falling, reckless,dangerousfeeling had been anything but safe. And, deep down, she’d revelled in the difference between her and her mother’s wedding. Turning before the memory and the thought could take hold, she went back to what had really been behind her leaving Javier six years ago.
‘I really wanted her to be happy,’ she said truthfully. ‘And I really didn’t want to be the spoilt only child, jealous of her mum’s new partner.’ A tear escaped and rolled slowly down her cheek. Feeling shame and hating that it still hurt, hating the fact that shehad beenjealous.
‘Mum changed. Slowly at first. Bit by bit she lost some of the colour she had brought to my childhood. I watched her losing little pieces of who she was to a man who didn’t care.’ An ache in her chest made the last words almost a whisper.
‘It’s not that Steven demands it or expects that she puts him first, but in some ways it’s worse that he simply lets it happen. He takes and takes and takes and Mum won’t stop. She orbits him like a moon around a planet,’ Emily explained, her breath hitching in her throat. ‘And that’s what I feared I was doing with you.’
Emily’s words hit Javier like a gut punch and a part of him regretted even asking the question. Earlier that evening he’d been so full of anger and resentment that it had felt like a poison running through his veins. Now, he’d almost welcome that feeling because it would be better thanthis.
‘Emily—’
She held up her hand to stop him. ‘I... It wasn’t your fault, Javier. And I’m not blaming you,’ she said quickly enough for him to believe it. ‘But I didn’t speak Spanish, and I didn’t know anyone here. I put my degree on hold to stay here and my world became about you. It became waiting for you to come home, to have weekends with you so that I could talk to you and, even then, I had nothing to share other than what I’d maybe bought for the house or what I’d cooked that day.’
Javier frowned, confused and still defensive enough to sound it. ‘I asked if you wanted to apply to college here.’
‘You did,’ she agreed, ‘but I wasn’t sure how much I’d get to learn without speaking the language.’
‘You could have taken classes.’
‘Yes...but you liked me to travel with you when you did business. I was due to start classes locally when we went to Seville for a week.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And then the term after, we went to Zaragoza.’
Javier kept his mouth shut before he suggested something else that she refuted. He hadn’t realised that he had done that. In fact, he disliked intensely looking back and realising that he hadn’t even been aware of it at the time.
‘Time just started to slip away from us and more and more you were working and I was left behind. And I thought if I returned to England and you came after me, I’dknow. I’d know that you saw me. I’d know that it wasn’t just me that revolved around you.’
